Tuesday, September 27, 2011

La Pintoresca Library

We're visiting Pasadena libraries for Banned Books Week. Pasadena has too many libraries to visit them all in one week (and we're all snooty-proud of that fact), but we'll do what we can.

This is the lovely La Pintoresca branch library at the corner of Washington and Fair Oaks. It's one of the busiest of our branch libraries.

Last night I went to a lecture at Caltech, given by professor John Sutherland of Caltech and University College London, about Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World"--which, perhaps not coincidentally, is on the list of banned or challenged classics we discussed the other day. That's a long way 'round to telling you the lecture was sponsored by the Friends of the Caltech Libraries. Did you know Caltech has six libraries? (Speaking of snooty-proud.)

Now that I think of it, Pasadena City College has a beautiful library. And of course there's the Altadena Library. I wonder if there's a library at the Art Center College of Design? JPL might have one, too. Do the schools still have libraries? If they do, I'll be tripping over myself.

Update from Thal Armathura (what would we do without you, Thal?):
This is from Flowers of Marengo by Maggie Valentine, a fascinating article about northwest Pasadena and its many treasures:The site of La Pintoresca (Painter) Hotel, the land was acquired by the City when the hotel burned down. Landscape architects Theodore Payne and Ralph Cornell laid out the park in 1925. Many of the trees and plantings date from the 1880's, when they were part of the grounds of the hotel. The spanish Revival library, designed by Cyril Benett and Fitch Haskell in 1930, complements the 1925 Electric Substation, also by Bennett and Haskell, at the northeast corner of the park. Clerestory windows in the central tower illuminate the reading room and circulation desk in the center of the building, which is laid out in a Greek cross plan. The library and park are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

What a great name for a library. Oh, you can add to your list of libraries in Pas the one at the Ninth Circuit Court on Grand Avenue. Law books, but great historic building and nice view of the bridge.

Don't know the current situation at Art Center...but would presume most of anything they had to offer would be online now.

Most K-12 schools either don't have a library anymore, or have a sad-sack offering. The only exception to that seems to be in the high rent districts. My S-I-L works part time at a school library near Laguna---district has plenty of money and plenty of parent $ participation, but even then she has to fight for $ for books and hours.

Love how they've cleaned up the library in your pic---wish more would. Then again, I grew up with the same building in SoPas that has only changed a little over the years---I don't care so much what the pretty parts look like, I care more about what is inside.

You've got me tripping back in time through all the libraries I've known. We moved every 3 years, but every Army base and school had a library - some so small, I got through every book in the children's section. Being allowed to take home the encyclopedias one volume at a time was such a treat!

Steven, I might call this a mix of Mission and adobe, but I'm not an expert. Very little information about the architecture is given on the city's library website, and I'm not finding the right search string. I wanted to tell you who the architect was.

Bellis, the South Pasadena Library is a Carnegie Library. There's also one in Altadena you may not have noticed. It's now a private home, right on Lake Avenue at Beverly Way about a block south of Webster's on the east side of the street. There's a wall built around it, but you can peek and see some of the features.

Petrea,I was told by a retired employee of this branch that the basement of the Hotel Pintoresca/Painter Hotel is still underneath the library and accessible through the library. The Hotel Pintoresca, which also went by the names at various periods of Hotel Pasadena and Hotel Painter, was located on this spot from about 1888 to when it burned down in about 1913. The City of Pasadena acquired the land which included the hotel grounds and gardens, made it a park and built the La Pintoresca Park Branch Library in 1930. The Hotel Pintoresca was the largest and most luxurious hotel north of Colorado from its opening to its destruction. You'll find many images of its exterior and interior on the various digital photo websites such as:http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/search/controller/view/chs-m1143.htmlI read a newspaper account that the Hotel Pintoresca grand piano was saved from the fire and ended up, I believe, in the Shakespeare Club on South Grand in Pasadena. Let me know, and we'll make an expedition to the basement of the Pintoresca Library/Hotel. I've been meaning to do that forever..